Blood Music

by Greg Bear

  Yes, yes, and hadn’t he just cursed Ulam for his brilliance, and hadn’t the same comparison crossed his mind?

  Frankenstein’s monster. Inescapable. Boringly obvious.

  People were so afraid of the new, of change.

  And now he was afraid, too, though admitting his fear was difficult Best to be rational, to present himself for study, an unintentional human sacrifice like Dr. Louis Slotin, at Los Alamos in 1946. By accident, Slotin and seven others had been accidentally exposed to a sudden burst of ionizing radiation. Slotin had ordered the seven others not to move. He had then drawn circles around his feet and theirs, to give fellow scientists solid data about distances from the source and intensity of exposure on which to base their studies. Slotin had died nine days later. A second man died twenty years later of complications attributed to the radiation. Two others died of acute leukemia.

  Human guinea pigs. Noble, self-possessed Slotin.

  Had they wished, in those terrible moments, that no one had ever split the atom?

  Pharmek had leased its own strip two kilometers from its countryside research facilities, outside Wiesbaden, to play host to businessmen and scientists, and also to expedite the receiving and processing of plant and soil samples from search teams around the world. Bernard circled over the divided fields and woods at ten thousand feet, the eastern sky touched with dawn.

  He switched the secondary radio to the Pharmek automatic ILS system, and keyed the mike twice to activate the lights and glide path. The strip appeared below him in the predawn grayness, wind direction indicated by an arrow of lights to one side.

  Bernard followed the lights and glide path and felt the wheels thump and squeal against the strip’s concrete; a perfect landing, the last the sleek executive jet would ever make.

  On the port side he could see a large white truck and personnel dressed in biohazard suits waiting for him to finish his taxi. They kept a brilliant spotlight trained on the aircraft. He waved out the window and motioned for them to stay where they were. Over the radio, he said, “I need an isolation suit ready for me about one hundred meters from the plane. And the truck will have to back off a hundred meters beyond that.” A man standing on the truck cab listened to a companion inside and signaled thumbs-up. A limp isolation suit was arranged on the runway and the truck and personnel quickly increased their distance.

  Bernard powered down the engines and cut the switches, leaving only the cabin lights and emergency fuel jettison system on. Jeppesen case under his arm, he stepped into the passenger cabin and took out a pressurized aluminum canister of disinfectant from the luggage compartment. With a deep breath, he slipped a rubber filter mask over his head and read the instructions on the side of the canister. The black conical nozzle had a flexible plastic hose with a brass fitting. The fitting slipped snugly into the top valve in the canister and snicked home.

  Nozzle in one hand and canister in another, Bernard returned to the cockpit and sprayed the controls, seat, floor and ceiling until they dripped with the milky green, noxious fluid. He then re-entered the passenger cabin, applying the high-pressure stream to everything he had touched, and more besides. He unscrewed the nozzle when the can was empty and released the pressure valve, placing the canister in a leather-cushioned seat. With the twist of a lever, the hatch hissed open, descending to a few inches above the concrete.

  He tapped his pants pocket with one hand to make sure the flare pistol was there, felt for the six extra shells, and climbed down the stairway to the concrete, setting the Jeppesen case on the runway about ten meters from the jet’s bright red nose.

  Step by step, he sabotaged his aircraft, first loosening and draining the hydraulics systems, then slashing the tires and letting out the air. With an ax he broke the windscreen on the starboard side of the cockpit, then the three passenger windows on the port side, clambering up on the wing to reach them.

  He climbed up the stairs and entered the cockpit, reaching around the disinfectant-soaked seat to pull up the cover on the fuel jettison switch. With a hard click, the switch depressed under his finger and the valves opened. Bernard quickly left the plane, snatched the case and ran to where the gray and orange isolation suit lay on the strip.

  The technicians and Pharmek personnel had made no attempt to interfere. Bernard removed the pistol and shells from his pocket, took off all his clothing and donned the pressurized suit. Balling up the clothing, he carried it to the pool of jet fuel under the Falcon. He returned and opened the case, removing his passport and dropping it into a plastic bag. Then he picked up the gun.

  The shell slid smoothly into the barrel. He took careful aim-hoping the trajectory wouldn’t be too curved-and fired a flare at his pride and joy.

  The fuel blossomed in a mushroom of orange and roiling black. Silhouetted against the inferno, Bernard hefted his case and walked toward the truck.

  A customs official was not likely to be present, but to be legal and aboveboard, he held the plastic-wrapped passport out and pointed at it. A man in a similar isolation suit took it from him.

  “Nothing to declare,” Bernard said. The man raised his hand to the suit’s helmet in acknowledgment and stepped back. “Spray me down, please.”

  He pirouetted in the shower of disinfectant, lifting his arms. As he climbed the steps into the truck’s isolation tank, he heard the faint hum of the air recirculator and saw the purple gleam of ultraviolet lights. The hatch swung shut behind nun, paused, then sank into its seals with a distant sigh.

  Heading toward Pharmek on a narrow two-lane road through grass pastures, Bernard peered through the thick side view port at the landing strip. The fuselage of the jet had collapsed in a skeletal, blackened heap. Flames still leaped high into the summer dawn. The blaze seemed to be consuming everything.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Heinz Paulsen-Fuchs looked at the records of calls displayed on the screen of his phone. Already it was beginning. There had been inquiries from several agencies, including the Bundesumweltamt—House Environmental Oversight—and the Bundesgesundheitsamt, Federal Health. State officials in Frankfurt and Wiesbaden were also concerned.

  All flights to and from the United States had been canceled. He could expect officials on his doorstep within hours. Before they arrived, he had to hear Bernard’s explanation.

  Not for the first time in his life did he regret coming to the aid of a friend. It was not the least of his failings. One of the most important industrialists in post-war Germany, and he was still a sentimental soft-touch.

  He donned a transparent raincoat over his trim gray wool suit and carefully placed a beret on his curly white hair. Then he waited by the front door for the rain-beaded Citröen.

  “Good morning, Uwe,” he greeted his chauffeur as the car door was opened for him. “I promised this for Richard.” He leaned over the seat and handed Uwe three paperback mysteries. Richard was the chauffeur’s twelve-year-old son, like Paulsen-Fuchs an avid mystery buff. “Drive even faster than usual.”

  “You will pardon me that I didn’t meet you at the airstrip,” Paulsen-Fuchs said. “I was here, preparing for your arrival—and then I was called away. There are already inquiries from my government. Something very serious is happening. You are aware of it?”

  Bernard approached the thick, triple-paned window separating the biological containment laboratory from the adjacent viewing chamber. He held up his hand, criss-crossed by white lines, and said, “I’m infected.”

  Paulsen-Fuchs’ eyes narrowed and he held two fingers to his cheek. “You are apparently not alone, Michael. What is happening in America?”

  “I haven’t heard anything since I left.”

  “Your Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta have issued emergency instructions. All air flights intra-and international are cancelled. Rumors say some cities do not respond to communications—telephone or radio. There appears to be rapidly spreading chaos. Now, you come to us, burn your vehicle on our airstrip, make very certain that you are the only thi
ng from your country to survive in ours-everything else is sterilized. What can we make from all this, Michael?”

  “Paul, there are several things all countries must do immediately. You must quarantine recent travelers from the U.S., Mexico-possibly from all of North America. I have no idea how far the contagion will spread, but it seems to be moving quickly.”

  “Yes, our government is working to do just this. But you know bureaucracy—”

  “Go around the bureaucracy. Cut off all physical contact with North America.”

  “I cannot simply make them do that by suggesting—”

  “Paul,” Bernard said, holding up his hand again, “I have perhaps a week, less if what you say is accurate. Tell your government this is more than just a vat spill. I have all the important records in my flight case. I need to conference with your senior biologists as soon as I’ve had a couple of hours sleep. Before they talk to me, I want them to view the files I brought with me. I’ll plug the disks into the terminal here. I can’t say much more now; I’ll fall over if I don’t sleep soon.”

  “Very well, Michael.” Paulsen-Fuchs regarded him sadly, deep lines of worry showing on his face. “Is it something we imagined could happen?”

  Bernard thought for a moment. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

  “All the worse, then,” Paulsen-Fuchs said. “I will arrange things now. Transfer your data. Get sleep.” Paulsen-Fuchs left and the light in the viewing chamber was turned off.

  Bernard paced the three-by-three meters area of his new home. The lab had been built in the early eighties for genetic experiments which, at the time, were regarded as potentially dangerous. The entire inner chamber was suspended within a high-pressure tank; any ruptures in the chamber would result in atmosphere entering, not escaping. The pressurized tank could be sprayed with several kinds of disinfectant, and was surrounded by yet another tank, this one evacuated. All electrical conduits and mechanical systems which had to pass through the tanks were jacketed in sterilizing solutions. Air and waste materials leaving the lab were subjected to high-heat sterilization and cremation; any samples taken from the lab were processed in an adjacent chamber with the same safeguards. From now until the problem was solved, or he was dead, nothing from Bernard’s body would be touched by another living thing outside the chamber.

  The walls were neutral light gray; lighting was provided by fluorescents in vertical strips in the walls, and by three bright ceiling-mounted panels. Lights could be controlled from both inside and outside. The floor was featureless black tile. In the middle of the room-clearly visible from both of the opposed viewing chambers-was a standard business desk and secretary’s chair, and on the desk, a high-resolution monitor. A utilitarian but comfortable-looking cot, without sheets or blanket, awaited him in one corner. A chest of drawers stood by the stainless steel pass-through hatch. On one wall, a large rectangular square marked a hatch for large equipment—waldoes, he suspected. The ensemble was completed by a lounge chair and a curtained commode-shower facility that looked like it had been removed in one piece from an airplane or recreational vehicle.

  He picked up the pants and shirt laid out for him on the cot and felt the material between forefinger and thumb. There would be no accommodations for modesty or privacy from here on. He was no longer a private person. He would soon be wired, probed, inspected by doctors and generally treated like a laboratory animal.

  Very well, he thought, lying back on the cot. I deserve it. I deserve whatever happens now. Mea culpa.

  Bernard fell back on the cot and closed his eyes.

  His pulse sang in his ears.

  ANAPHASE

  NOVEMBER

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  BROOKLYN HEIGHTS

  Mother? Howard?” Suzy McKenzie wrapped herself in the sky-blue flannel robe her boyfriend had given her the month before in celebration of her eighteenth birthday, and padded barefoot down the hall. Her eyes were bleary with sleep. “Ken?” She was usually the last to wake up. “Slow Suzy” she often called herself with a secret, knowing smile.

  She didn’t keep clocks in her room but the sun outside the window was high enough for it to be past ten o’clock. The bedroom doors were closed. “Mother?” She knocked on the door of her mother’s room. No answer.

  Surely one of her brothers would be up. “Kenneth? Howard?” She turned around in the middle of the hall, making the wood floor creak. Then she twisted the knob on her mother’s door and pushed it open. “Mother?” The bed had not been made; the covers slumped around the bottom. Everybody must be downstairs. She washed her face in the bathroom, inspected the akin of her cheeks for more blemishes, was relieved to find none, and walked down the stairs into the foyer. She couldn’t hear a sound.

  “Hey,” she called out from the living room, confused and unhappy. “Nobody woke me up. I’ll be late for work.” She was in her third week of waitressing at a neighborhood deli. She enjoyed the work it was much more interesting and real than working at the Salvation Army thrift store—and it helped her mother financially. Her mother had lost her job three months before and lived on the irregular checks from Suzy’s father, plus their rapidly diminishing savings. She looked at the Benrus ship’s dock on the table and shook her head. Ten thirty; she was really late. But that didn’t worry her as much as where everybody had gone. They fought a lot, sure, but they were a close family except for her father, whom she hardly missed any more, not much anyway—and everybody wouldn’t just go away and not tell her, not even wake her up.

  She pushed the swinging door to the kitchen and stepped halfway through. What she saw didn’t register at first: three shapes out of place, three bodies, one in a dress on the floor, slumped up against the sink, one in jeans with no shut in a chair at the kitchen table, the third half-in, half-out of the pantry. No muss, no fuss, just three bodies she couldn’t immediately recognize.

  She was quite calm at first She wished she hadn’t opened the door just then; perhaps if she had opened it a few moments earlier, or later, everything would have been normal. Somehow it would have been a different door-the door to her world—and life would have gone on with just the minor lapse of no one awakening her. Instead, she hadn’t been warned, and that wasn’t fair, really. She had opened the door at just the wrong rime, and it was too late to close it.

  The body against the sink wore her mother’s dress. The face, arms, legs, and hands were covered with raised white stripes. Suzy entered the kitchen two small steps, her breath coming short and uneven. The door slipped out of her fingers and swung shut. She took a step back, then one sideways, a small dance of terror and indecision. She would have to call the police, of course. Maybe an ambulance. But first she would have to find out what happened and all her instincts told her just to get out of the kitchen, out of the house.

  Howard, twenty, regularly wore jeans without a shirt around the house. He liked to go bare-chested to show off his well-muscled, if not brawny frame. Now his chest was a reddish brown color, like an Indian’s, and ridged like a potato chip or an old-fashioned washboard. His face was calm, eyes closed, mouth shut He was still breathing.

  Kenneth—it had to be Kenneth—looked more like a pile of dough in clothes than her eldest brother.

  Whatever had happened was completely incomprehensible. She wondered if it was something everybody else knew about but had forgotten to tell her.

  No, that didn’t make sense. People were seldom cruel to her, and her mother and brothers were never cruel. The best thing to do was back out the door and call the police, or somebody; somebody who would know what to do.

  She looked at the list of numbers pinned above the old black phone in the foyer, then tried to dial the emergency number. She kept fumbling, her finger jerking from the holes in the dial. Tears were in her eyes when she finally managed to complete the three digits.

  The phone rang for several minutes without answer. Finally a recording came on: “All our lines are busy. Please do not hang up or you will lose your pri
ority.” Then more ringing. After another five minutes, she hung up, sobbing, and dialed for the operator. No answer there, either. Then she thought of the conversation they had had the night before, about some sort of bug in California. It had been on the radio. Everybody getting sick and troops being called in. Only then, remembering this, did Suzy McKenzie go out the front door and stand on the steps, screaming for help.

  The street was deserted. Parked cars lined both sides—inexplicably—for parking was forbidden between eight in the morning and six at night every day but Thursday and Friday, and this was Tuesday, and the enforcement was strict. Nobody was driving. She couldn’t see anybody in a car or walking or sitting in a window. She ran up one side of the street, weeping and shouting first in supplication, then in anger, then terror, then again begging for help.

  She stopped screaming when she saw a postman lying on the front walk of a brownstone between two parallel wrought-iron fences. He lay on his back, eyes shut, and he looked just like Mother and Howard. To Suzy, postmen were sacred beings, always reliable. She used her fingers to push the terror out of her face and scrunched her eyes shut in concentration. “That bug’s gotten everywhere,” she told herself. “Somebody has to know what to do.”

  She returned to her house and picked up the phone again. She began dialing all the numbers she knew. Some went through; others created only silence or strange computer noises. None of the phones that rang were answered. She redialed the number of her boyfriend, Cary Smyslov, and listened to it ring eight, nine, ten times before hanging up. She paused, considered for a moment, and dialed the number of her aunt in Vermont.

  The phone was answered on the third ring. “Hello?” The voice was weak and tremulous, but it was definitely her aunt

  “Aunt Dawn, this is Suzy in Brooklyn. I’m in big trouble here—”